A large mass of legend and folk-lore is associated with the halcyon or kingfisher. One curious old superstition is that if a dead kingfisher is suspended from the roof it will always turn its breast in the direction from which the wind blows.[97] On looking over any old works on natural history one is repeatedly struck by the way in which the writers all copy each other, and reproduce the most outrageous statements, without ever seeming to care to bring the matters they deal with to the easy test of actual proof. It is, therefore, the more refreshing to find the old writer, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the “Enquiry into Vulgar Errors,” very wisely declining to accept the statement without proof, but actually getting a kingfisher for himself, and seeing what would befall. His reflections and experience are so graphically and quaintly given in his book that we make no apology for transferring them to our own pages. He says “that a Kingfisher hanged by the bill, sheweth in what quarter the winde is by an occult and secret property, converting the breast to that point of the horizon from whence the winde doth blow, is a received opinion and very strange, introducing naturall Weathercocks, and extending magneticall positions as far as animall natures: a conceit supported chiefly by present practice, yet not made out by reason or experience. Unto reason it seemeth very repugnant that a carcasse or body disanimated should be so affected by every winde as to carry a conformable respect and constant habitude thereto. For although in sundry animals we deny not a kinde of naturall Meteorology or innate præsention bothe of winde and weather, yet that proceeding from sense receiving impressions from the first mutations of the air, they cannot in reason retain their apprehension after death: as being affections which depend upon life and depart upon disanimation. And therefore with more favourable reason may we draw the same effect or sympathie upon the Hedgehog, whose præsention of windes is so exact that it stoppeth the North or Southern hole of its nest, according to prenotion of these windes ensuing; which some men observing, have been able to make predictions whiche way the winde should turn, and been esteemed hereby wise men in point of weather. Now this proceeding from sense in the creature alive, it were not reasonable to hang up an Hedgehog dead and to expect a conformable motion unto its living conversion. Thus Glowe-wormes alive project a lustre in the dark, which fulgour notwithstanding ceaseth after death; and thus the Torpedo, which being alive stupifies at a distance, applied after death produceth no such result.”